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Moving back to the reborn Regent Park

The Regent Park revitalization office sits at the heart of the community housing project just east of Toronto's downtown core.

By Patty WinsaSTAFF REPORTER

Mon., March 16, 2009

The Regent Park revitalization office sits at the heart of the community housing project just east of Toronto's downtown core.

In this often forlorn, crime-infested and dehumanizing urban experiment, it's injecting respect and kindness into the neighbourhood.

Since December, tenants resettled more than three years ago by Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) to accommodate the first phase of Regent Park's billion-dollar transformation have been streaming into the office, choosing the building, floor, even suite they want to live in.

"The offer of a unit in a new building was a surprise," says Mohammed Quader, 48, who didn't expect that he, his wife Rokeya Sharif and their 9-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter would be among the first to move back.

In May, the family will leave behind their 50-year-old apartment in a low-rise building, where the heat never worked and mice were common, and move to the second floor of 246 Sackville St., a family building with a mix of 65 rent-geared-to-income and affordable housing suites priced at 80 per cent of market value.

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Quader, whose family was one of seven to win a lottery for a three-bedroom unit, says he "feels good" about the move.

Despite that, he's back in the office to request a change to a different floor.

Like a nervous condo buyer who's purchased a unit from plans, Quader is concerned his new 950-sq.-ft. apartment – which he has only seen on paper – may be too small.

As displaced tenants choose new units, the revitalization office's open-door policy and its employees help to make the process of moving back as painless as possible. Picking a new home has evolved into egalitarian decision-making, a departure from the dictates and weary waiting lists usual for community housing placement.

It's not unheard of for Regent Park residents to wait 10 years just to transfer homes within the development. And TCHC has endured recent criticism for its inability to keep up with repairs on buildings throughout the city, some of them in such decay that the only solution is to tear them down.

Having a choice of unit "really engages people and makes them feel like they've been involved in the process," says Liz Root, the revitalization's project director. Community participation is also one of TCHC's 12 planning principles.

"Selecting a unit and being empowered to do that is part of that," she says.

Residents, asked to give their top three choices, were also given the option of moving off-site into new TCHC townhomes on Regent and Arnold Sts., or to one of three buildings currently under construction: 92 Carlton St., 60 Richmond St. E. and 501 Adelaide St. E.

The process has been slowed thanks to a weekend break-in – the second since November – which left the office in chaos and forced it to close one day last week.

Burglars broke a side window and trashed the office, throwing files to the floor, stealing computers and destroying others secured to desktops by pouring glue into them.

Dust from a fire extinguisher discharged by the thieves has been cleaned up, and folders of destroyed floor plans have been reprinted and now sit neatly stacked to one side of the reception desk.

All renters displaced for the initial phase have now pored through those folders and made their choice.

Ripa, a single mother of two, is visiting the office for the third time with her cousin Hanif Hussin, whom she needs to interpret for her in her native Bengali.

A Regent Park resident since her arrival in Canada in 1997, Ripa will also move into 246 Sackville in May.

"She's happy to go to the new building," says Hussin, translating for her. "Her children are very excited to move back."

But to qualify, Ripa will have to come back a fourth time with a missing income statement, beating a March 20 deadline when all the necessary paperwork has to be in.

Renters must prove they still qualify for subsidized housing. The paperwork will also ensure everyone is in the right unit for their needs.

Soon, all 370 households who moved out of Regent Park will know which unit they'll come back to. And many may choose to delay their return for years, until the second phase is complete.

"So we're trying to make the move-back process as comfortable as possible."

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